


Old Men Bonding

by NorroenDyrd



Series: Should Never Have Existed [20]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Cole (Dragon Age) Talks A Lot, Demons, Developing Friendships, Dialogue Heavy, Enemies to Friends, Gen, Graphic Description, Grey Wardens, Non-Canon Inquisitor (Dragon Age), Not Canon Compliant, Post-Here Lies the Abyss, Revelations, Some Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-05-20 13:23:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14895404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: More snapshots of the Herald!Alexius AU (glancing through the larger series is recommended for more context), this time offering an insight into Alexius' uneasy friendship with Blackwall.





	1. Dawn in the Desert

The battle is over.  
  
No more roaring projectiles hurtled from the gigantic, grinding catapults, trails of flame and smoke curling after them - in flourishing stokes of gold and pale grey against a deep-blue sky, which would end in tremendous, spitting, frothing bursts whenever the shots reached their mark and ripped through the ancient stonework of the besieged fortress as though it were cupboard.  
  
No more flashes of searing purple and crimson magic erupting from the hands of mages in silvery striped armour: blank-faced and moving with the chilling, soulless precision of wound-up dolls, indifferent to the sight of human (and elven, and occasionally dwarven) beings writhing in agony when the battle magic consumed them, liquefying and boiling and clearing away all that it touched, with a sizzle and gargle and squelch, greedy for flesh and armour alike... Indifferent even when those hapless victims were warriors bearing the same silver and blue colours as the mages, with the same telltale gryphon emblem adorning their massive pauldrons.  
  
No more voices rising to the heavens, till they threatened to shatter their very cloudy dome: some screaming with a primal, bestial ferocity, fueled by a raw, burning, smothering mix of fear and rage and mounting bloodlust; others, clinging on to the last shreds of sense in this crucible of slaughter. Echoing the rallying battle cry of the knight in lion helmet who stood tallest of all upon the battlements, shaping the flow of rushing, deafened soldiers into a targeted, purposeful force. Calling each other's names - and fighting harder, striking faster, more precisely, almost joyfully, when they heard a familiar voice call back. Attempting to sing, to throw a shaky, rasping, smoke-choked 'Bare your blade and raise it high' in the monstrous, melted-off, unface-like faces of the wraiths and shades summoned by the indifferent mages - as a sigh of defiance, and a way of tricking themselves into not being afraid.  
  
No more.  
  
No more fire or sound or fury. The desert is still again. Rolling far to the horizon like a boundless sea, caught in a single moment amid the heaving of its waves and frozen by a powerful, all-consuming spell that has turned the splashing waters in hardened sand and rock.  
  
The air has cleared, not a cinder, not a mote of dust disturbing the perfect, crispy iciness that chains these lands overnight. And the sky dome, free of smoke and mage fire, is smooth and unfathomably dark, so that it would make one dizzy to look up at it for too long. The only things that disrupt its head-spinning expanse of inky-blue are a smattering of stars across the middle, like pearly white seeds scattered by a careless hand and a turquoise stripe along the horizon, far to the east, heralding the same thing as the not-at-all-frightened soldiers' song. The dawn will come - soon.  
  
Watching that stripe expand and flare brighter, is a solitary figure that lingers on the battlements, hands interwoven tightly behind its back and a garland of flapping scarves shielding it from the nocturnal cold. Someone from the Tevinter Imperium - someone among the dark puppeteers that had wiped the silver-armoured mages' minds, turning them blank and pliable - would have surely recognized this figure's face, turned up towards the star-splashed dome. And a few - like the puppeteer in chief, the sneering Magister that is now wrapped in chains, his forces defeated and his thralls free - did recognize this face, with its heavy lines and sharp nose and tightly pursed lips. The face of someone who was also a Magister, once, and in another lifetime, would have pulled at the strings of his own puppets, for his own dark purpose.  
  
But that lifetime has been erased, completely and irrevocably, like writing cleared off a waxen tablet in an age before ink and paper. Erased to make way for a new story - one where, through his own blunder, the Magister has taken the place of the demon-slaying hero he was supposed to kill. He is no puppeteer now, no dark cultist; he is the...  
  
'Inquisitor?'  
  
The sound of another voice, gruff and rather hoary, as if for lack of practice, makes the man the battlements turn around stiffly - whereupon he meets the gaze of another man, broad and sturdily built, wearing a thick padded jacket and sporting a grizzled black beard.  
  
'Warden Blackwall,' the Inquisitor responds coldly, acknowledging the man's presence with a curt nod.  
  
His lips drawn into an even thinner line than before, his forehead split by three deep lines between his knitted eyebrows, he does not look at all enthused to see Blackwall; the latter is not at ease either, his back rigid and his hands balled into fists.  
  
'I... I wanted to thank you,' he says, clearing his throat. 'For giving the Wardens... My... My fellows, that is... Another chance. I...'  
  
He clears his throat again, with a peculiar growl, as though he had swallowed a handful of coarse pebbles and they were now gritting against one another.  
  
'I was certain you'd exile them... Us...'  
  
'I didn't do it out of the goodness of my heart,' the Inquisitor speaks sharply over Blackwall's stuttering, turning back to look at the desert and clasping his fingers even tighter.  
  
'They are still vulnerable to the Eld... to Corypheus' corruption - and who better to watch over them than the Inquisition? Although...'  
  
His hands, locked behind his back, claw at each other till his knuckles turn white.  
  
'I think I understand... your kind better now. I hated the Wardens for being out of reach when I needed their help... But we have just  learned why that happened. They were nowhere to be found... Because they had been infiltrated by the Venatori. The very Venatori that I once served. The very Venatori that I could still be serving. Right now. If it had not been for my little magic accident, I could have stood on the other side of those barricades. I could have been Erimond'.  
  
'You aren't Erimond though,' Blackwall says, with a profound sincerity that makes the Inquisitor slant his eyes to scrutinize him, one eyebrow skewed.  
  
'Why this outburst of friendliness anyway?' he asks, his manner guarded and slightly sarcastic. 'I heard you had written off me and Dorian to your "the less I think about them, the better" category'.  
  
'Oh, you can both be assholes,' Blackwall blurts out, prompting a faint scoff from the Inquisitor. 'But... But that doesn't mean I can't be... concerned for you. Especially after what that demon told you'.  
  
For a while, silence falls between the two men, and the cold from the slumbering desert seems to lock its clutches tighter. Even the stars blink briefly into nothing, obscured by a cloud drifting past - and instead of the sands and the sky, the Inquisitor and the Warden gaze out upon a pitch-black, icy abyss. Rather like the one they have recently braved, in the strangling snare of the raw Fade, confronted, with every step they took down the maze-like path amid vapors and lapping bottomless pools, by grotesque spidery creatures that shifted into illusions of their worst nightmares; while the master of the realm, the demonic creature that commanded ghosts and conjured nightmares and took away memories, taunted them with simple but weighted words that were meaningless to an outsider but bored a dripping, mangled hole through their targets' hearts.  
  
'Ah, Blackwall...' the demon drawled, savouring every word, as the bulky, bearded mortal trampled heavily through the shifting mists, cursing at the ground that refused to stay in place. 'There is nothing like a Grey Warden - and you are nothing like a Grey Warden'.  
  
And to his companion, it whispered, the gloating in its echoing voice peaking to an almost lustful pleasure,  
  
'I shall not call you Inquisitor - you and I both know you stole that title from another. You are not Inquisitor, and the Inquisitor is not yourself. You are not yourself out of that red hood... Alexius'.  
  
The two men still stand in silence, the sandy sea frozen at their feet; and the demon's voice rolls through both their minds, burrowing deep through their chests and skulls and leaving a throb of pain in its wake.  
  
'I... I... see...' the Inquisitor - or the one they should not be calling Inquisitor - squeezes out of himself at long last.  
  
'Well, you needn't be concerned. It was nothing I hadn't said to myself before. I became Inquisitor... by mistake. Through a turn of events that was not meant to happen. I never denied that. I wear a stolen mantle; my title was intended for someone far worthier'.  
  
'But you are making yourself worthy instead,' Blackwall points out softly. 'You started out as an evil cultist, but when fate slapped some glowing crap onto your hand, you did not run back to your master. You decided to take the chance you were given; to do right by people. We may not often see eye to eye - but that choice you made back then... That's something I can respect'.  
  
'Oh joy, I have earned the respect of a hairy southern woodsman,' the Inquisitor intones flatly.  
  
Blackwall scowls.  
  
'If you keep going all Dorian on me, I will begin to regret not being exiled,' he grumbles into his beard.  
  
'You won't,' the Inquisitor glances at him again, his lips crawling up into a smirk. 'I can name a few people who will kill you if you leave. And while I am not one of them... I do appreciate the company'.  
  
'It's... It's a bad idea to brood alone after a demon does shit to your head,' Blackwall says, heaving a sigh.  
  
'Especially as a Tevinter mage?' the Inquisitor asks, notably defensive.  
  
Blackwall rounds his eyes and throws his hands up.  
  
'What?! No! That's not what I meant! I was trying to offer you a drink or something!'  
  
'I think I have a better idea...' the Inquisitor nods in the direction of the desert, which, without either of them properly noticing, has gotten flooded in a watery, greenish light that is just beginning to warm up to yellow, as the stripe in the east glimmers with new colours.  
  
'I remember some of the scout reports mentioning more old fortresses that bear signs of Warden presence. Which could mean those artifacts you have been so keen on. So, how about we grab a mount each and clear our heads with a long ride through these sands? We could make good time before the sky heats up'.  
  
'Sounds like a plan,' Blackwall agrees.  
  
'Not sure if I am entertaining company for a fancy Tevinter noble, but...'  
  
'We could complain to one another about young people these days,' the Inquisitor jokes - and as both of them laugh, the abyssal darkness melts away from the desert.


	2. He Will Forgive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not as much of a next chapter as a vignette fic dedicated to the same subject. It takes place shortly after Revelations, and is mostly Cole-speak.

‘So uh… Cole,’ Blackwall taps his fingers nervously against the tankard that he is nursing, and looks sideways at the crouching figure that, a minute or so ago, melted out of grey mist and perched itself on the table’s edge. 'You can read minds… Do you think the Inquisitor will ever forgive me? I mean… He got me out of jail, and allowed me to serve under… my old name… But… He will not look at me’.  
  
Cole blinks, eyelashes long and pale and casting bluish shadow on his sallow cheeks.  
  
'It hurts to look at you,’ he explains, restless scabby fingers picking at the splinters of the table board. 'When he looks, he thinks about himself… Thoughts flashing, flickering, flooding in like a storm of rustling bugs. He cannot shake them off, and they crawl and sting till he feels like his skull is bleeding’.  
  
'Well, that was cheery,’ Blackwall grunts in reply - but Cole is nowhere near finished.  
  
'First, he thinks about the carriage - wheels grinding into the sand, stopping too soon, too sudden. Hungry claws against the door, laughing voices stifled, death leering in outside the window instead of the happy faces at home. At least the monsters that ambushed my family had the excuse of not being sentient’.  
  
Blackwall swallows - even though there is no mead upon his tongue, and the only thing he can taste is a dry, dusty kind of sharpness that makes it hard to speak or breathe.  
  
He does manage a hoarse, rather wheezing 'I see’. Figures that the Inquisitor would recall his own losses, compare his family to the one that Blackwall - Rainier - destroyed. Which must mean that forgiveness is not meant to be. Foolish of him to dare dream of it in the first place; he was starring to assume too much of himself, just like the Rainier of his younger day. He does not deserve it - and he should be reminded of it more often.  
  
Wait… Cole is not done now either.  
  
'And then, he thinks of the face in the mirror,’ he chants sadly, tilting his head up (as far as his enormous hat can allow).  
  
'Darkened eyes looking up at him, reminding him of what they’ve witnessed, of how they burned, always with pain, not always with tears. Haunting, harrowed, hated. A monster. Chasing after him, on torn bat wings of bleeding memories. His wife’s dead body; potion fumes in his son’s room; the Elder One’s hand, extended, waiting; two demons, ripping his mind raw one after the other; a mess of blood and screams and wrong magic…’  
  
Cole pauses, his voice still singsong but just barely beginning to crack.  
  
'He is scared. He will always carry this feeling with him, festering, fungal, soggy moist under the pristine outer cover. Cassandra helps sometimes, and Dorian, and his other children, many children, only one borne of him. But he is still scared of not being good enough. Of failing. Of losing everything. Of letting the monster catch up with him. And he knows that you have been scared too. That you have your own monster at your heels’.  
  
Cole blinks again, and his eyes are left wide and crystal clear.  
  
'He will forgive’.


End file.
